2024 retail industry outlook [REPORT]

As retailers look to woo price-sensitive consumers in 2024, loyalty will have to be earned. To make that happen, trust will need to be the cornerstone of their profitability playbook.

The last two years have been anything but ordinary. Consumers witnessed a 40-year inflationary high in June 2022 and 11 Federal Reserve rate hikes by July 2023. Given this volatility, it’s reasonable to assume that consumers’ collective psyche would be bruised, and they would retreat from the marketplace.

However, consumers have endured, surprising analysts by challenging conventional wisdom. In fact, consumers continue their consumption binge, with some benefiting from wage increases while others are presumably burning through savings and accumulating debt even as economic uncertainty continues to loom.

Against this backdrop of an uncertain 2024 economic outlook, a focus on rebuilding trust could lead to profitable loyalty.

With bargain-hunting consumers skipping from source to source and customer acquisition costs increasing 222% in the past decade, loyalty programs remain a hot topic. And with the opportunity to utilize first-person data from loyalty programs to create additional revenue, it’s no wonder retail executives’ most cited growth opportunity for 2024 was strengthening loyalty programs.

Based on what we’re hearing and seeing, 2024 will be the year to rewrite the loyalty playbook by putting trust at the center. Our annual retail industry outlook explores three key opportunities:

• Lean into loyalty programs
• Enhance omniexperience through in-store investments
• Drive individual engagement at scale with trustworthy AI

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